My parents met at Yale, in graduate school, she in the nursing school,
Dad in the medical school. Here they are at a pool party.
They married in '42. God, they loved each other
fiercely...through all the trials that came, I never saw their absolute
devotion to each other ever faulter.
Then Dad was off to WWII. Here he is on the left with Molly; on the
right is her brother Jack (an
Annapolis grad who commanded a Destroyer Escort,
DE-166, the Barron in the Pacific) and her older sister
Ruth. Dad and Molly had time enough to start my older brother
Bill who was born while Dad was gone.
He was an Army doctor in the African and Italian
campaigns, where the image below was taken. When brother Bill
and I took Dad to see MASH, when the movie
first came out, he emerged shaking his head and saying, "You know,
that's just
the way it was...if anything, it was crazier". His Evacuation Hospital
(not actually a MASH, as them came later in Korea, somewhat closer to
the front line, thus the M for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) consisted
of Yale Med/Nursing professors, staff and recent graduates. Very
smart, very dedicated self starters. For a
while they had no CO, and the
unit, of course, ran fine. Then
they had the misfortune to get a non-medical red-neck lifer CO who
determined to crack the whip over the eggheads and young
whipper-snappers. At this point they were on the beach at Anzio and
just barely within range of the German 88 artillery...and the CO had
them get up every morning (after they had been up until the early hours
of the morning the night before putting the soldiers back together) and
do calisthenics...which was so petty and pissy. So, when the CO
never showed, they would line up and do finger-pushups while grunting
for verisimilitude. One morning the rotten SOB actually got up to
lord over the troops, discovered the ruse and was livid. Life
was merry Hell for a month or so until the poor SOB came down with an
enlarged prostate, the only treatment for which then was a finger wave
every day or so, finger massage with a finger stuck up
you-know-where....being a red-neck, he was utterly mortified, retired
to his tent and the unit ran itself again.
Dad visted the souks of Africa and the
bazaars of Italy; he was endlessly fascinated by artisanry. He
designed and had made a pair of gold (frog) earrings for Molly and
after the neighborhood tradition of his childhood, wrote and illustraed
(in watercolor) a children's book for the son he'd not yet seen, who'd
been born after he was in the war in Italy. He had it beautifully
bound in leather and colorful cloth and entitled it The Story of
Oliver Clock. The dedication read:
To a little boy who will one day show
his father how to play
...and signed it with his little sigil, a bear or dog....and
dated it Italy 1944.
Molly visited and charmed her new in-laws
...and bore my older brother Bill in '43. They didn't see Dad
until he came back at the end of '45, war's end. The family then
moved to Philadelphia where Dad did further medical study in
ophthalmology under Francis Adler. I came along about a year later.
Here are all on at our home in Germantown,
a carriage house apartment, on the "porch". That's me reading the
newspaper along with my 4 year older brother Bill. Molly and Dad loved
the Philly milieu...the culture and sharp minds there.
The medical pranking, so much like that shown in M*A*S*H,
continued. Dad's residency in ophthalmology was at U Penn, a Land
Grant university; as such it could freely requisition surplus military
equipment. Someone pranked Dad by signing a requisition for a
surplus pontoon bridge pontoon in his name. It arrived when Dad was in
the middle of an operation; he heard the hospital PA system requesting
'Would Dr. Dean please go to the loading dock'. The ponton was
some 30' long by 6' wide by 3 ' deep...and was still on the truck; Dad
had them deliver it to our home where he filled it with water and made
a dandy swimming pool out of it.
A lightning bolt of fortune, of misfortune
Molly had polio when I was a year old. She had been a vivacious,
atheletic fox of a woman. Much was
taken from her, but her spirit and love never faltered.
Physically, she could move her head, and while she could not lift her
arms, she could crawl her hands to some degree. With aids, she
could barely write and dial a phone. But. She was a
towering flame of spirit, the vital heart of our family, and has always
been my criterion of courage. She fought to have a life, one day
at a time. She read voraciously, some 8-15 substantial fiction and
non-fuiction books a week, crawling her hand to turn the pages. Not
infrequently she would go on a book review program on the local TV
station. She could barely write a letter or, with difficulty,
dial a phone, yet once she took something like 9 months to knit a
intricate pattern Arram fisherman's sweater with popcorn stiches in the
center panel.
At left is a picture taken of my parents after my mother had
recovered as much as she ever would of her
physical abilities, taken in a way that hid her paralysis. I lived (and somewhat participated) in my parents' courage and love.
Hemingway: Courage is grace under pressure
I offer two things from those early days.
First, a 'letter' she had
written on an early electric typewriter when
she in rehabilitation in Warm Springs, then a center for those stricken
with polio; she wrote it to my (4 years) older brother Bill. Bill
and I were in the keeping of her mother and sister in Bradford, PA, and
Bill would have just been able to read. It wrings my heart.
Second, a recently found letter she wrote a
year after she had 'recovered' and the family had reassembled
They had planned to join a group medical practice in Santa Barbara,
California and have more kids. Polio changed all that: A sister I never got to know had to be aborted, Dad joined
his father's medical practice in Louisville, Kentucky and bought a
house a block from his parents, in the Highlands inurb. That's
where I grew up,
Louisville and 1629 Cowling.
Here's Molly and Dad in the back yard.
Also here, of course, is Dubout, the first of a wondrous string of
full-sized poodles
Dad with Yum-Yum and more on the poodles
Here's
two images of the way I remember my parents: thoughtful, heartfelt.
engaged. In my mother's picture, at the bottom left, you can see the
feeder, a metal tray with ball bearing supports that held her arms and
allowed her some agency.
For all that Molly's partial paralysis trimmed their wings, my
parents made fantastic lemonade from what they had. They hosted
parties and a sort of salon that brought the free thought, spirit and
culture they'd loved so much in Philadelphia to Louisville.
They were legendary, what can
I say...a free-wheeling, intellectual,blithe and independent spirited
bunch of people living wide
in a time and place that worshipped conformity and complaisance
Here
is my 5th grade report card; my father's comment: These grades
reflect the limitations of the teacher rather than the inattention or
maldirection of the student.
My father's obituary...but a pale shadow of the titan he was
Dr. W. Wynant Dean, a resident of Sanibel Island, FL, died Saturday,
January 23, 1999, he was 84.
Dr. Dean was a graduate of Male H.S., Louisville, KY. His college study
was at Hampton-Sydney and Indiana University (B.A., 1935) with a
postgraduate year at Stanford. He received his M.D. from Yale Medical
School in 1942 in Internal Medicine. He served during WWII as a doctor
assigned to the 15th Evacuation Hospital in the African and Italian
campaigns from 1942 - 1946. He was discharged as a Major and resumed
his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Ophthalmology,
1946 - 1949. Dr. Dean entered private practice in Louisville, KY with
his father, Dr. Walter Dean in 1949. Other achievements and
affiliations include: Diplomate of National Board of Medical Examiners,
National Board of Medical Examiners, American Board of Ophthalmology,
Graduate Study in Ophthalmology, American Academy of Ophthalmology and
Laryngology, Fellow University of Louisville Medical School Faculty
Life Member, Kentucky Medical Association, The Ancient and Honorable
Order of Kentucky Colonels. He was well known for his involvement in
pro bono medical work, politics, civil rights and the arts. Dr. Dean
retired in 1980.
My father, the Renaissance man.
What we did, we did at home; we didn't get out much....but that
never cramped Dad's style; he turned his interests to things he could
do there.
My father was a Renaissance man, not an intellectual man but absolutely
omniverous in his fascination for knowledge and artisanry. He
knew of things, of places, of people, before they became courant.
Places: We had one vacation a year,
2-3 weeks in the spring, because moving my near totally paralyzed
mother (a Smith grad, an intellectual, and fiercely alive; she formed
my spirit, conscience and consciousness) was such a dog-and-pony
show. When I was 8 or so, aobut 1955, it was Hilton Head before
it was'discovered", then twice in the French Quarter of New Orleans at
the
Maison De Ville (highly
recommended) when I was 11 and 12 or so...I roamed the French Quarter
as a kid safely. About 1960, it was Sanibel Island, before it was
discovered, and there we stayed ever after. Dad even got beach
frontage land....and later a condo there. A neighbor was one of
M.M. Kaye's daughter who I visited when in England and met the
gran
dame herself (author of The Far Pavilions). She had eidetic
sensorial (smell, taste, sight, everything) memories of India when her
father had been head of the Royal Colonial Indian Intelligence and she
ran wild through the palaces and treasuree rooms of rajahs and nabobs
and the bazaars of India.
Skills and artisanry: While a world class
ophthalmologist, his fascinations were polymath: painting, cooking,
baking, sculpting, wood and metal working......underneath it all, a
glee and fascination with artisanry and the natural world hat he passed
onto me. He was avid naturalist (tromping the woods of Kentuckiana and
bringing back wild flowers for a wildflower garden), gardener (we built
a lean-to green house on the side of the house that was filled with
camellias blooming in mid winter, and there were all kinds of trees:
hollies, magnolias, a Kentucky coffee bean tree, espaliered fruit trees
and a monster tulip poplar towering above all else in the back
yard). He was a
tool freak, an appreciator of fine machinery and antique cars.
So it was that in 1960, he bought
not one, but two Bugattis together for the price of a new
Buick...cars that weere the Ferraris of the '20s
and '30's, that I grew up wrenching and driving. And when a man
in his 50's died of cancer and left his
Maserati to an uncle in his 80s (who hadn't driven a stick in 40
years), my father got that too (
again for the price of a new
Buick). Which is not to say that anyone but a handful in
Louisville KY knew what they were.
People: In WWII serving in a MASH equivalent,
roamed the souks and bazaars of North Africa and Italy, watching the
artisans. When he came home, one of this chief delight in
medicine was meeting people, finding out what they did, and collecting
a sort of Rolodex of their characters, skills and artisanry. He
had a case for his test lenses custom constructed by a backwoods
master cabinet maker. When one of our Bugattis
needed a valve job, he knew a wonderful merry hunchback dwarf master
machinist who could do that (Bugattis didn't have detachable heads, you
had to pull the engine, turn it upside down pull the crankshaft,
conrods and pistons and reach way down the cylinder to grind the valve
seats). He did Colonel Sanders' (of KFC) eyes. People were
a
fascination to him; how many doctors have you come across that really
look at you and listen? He did. He learned from everyone he met,
a rare talent.
Involvement: In 1960, my father started the
ball rolling with what became a major civil rights case in the Supreme
Court (back when it cared about citizens' rights). Sam Thompson, a
black man who'd done odd jobs for the family, had been repeatedly
harassed by the police. He asked Dad for help, and my father got Sam in
touch with a family friend, Louis Lusky, for recourse. Lusky had
clerked at SCOTUS and involved with the KCLU...and the case went
directly from the Louisville City Court to the SCOTUS...where the DA
got his ass handed to him.
Here's the
Reader's Digest article on it. There's more .
More here
on my father's protean and catholic interests
A final image of Dad. This was taken by a family friend, Dr.
Howard Eskind out at Dad's country house....a place that was a
culmination of a life-time dream of his. He was searching for country
land as far back as I can remember and I would sometimes go with him as
he tramped the woods and country land....for Dad, the looking was as
much joy as finally finding it...which took him at least ten
years....out southwest of Louisville on the upstream side of an oxbow
bend on the Ohio. Here he is at ease and content with one of his
poodles...
My thanks to Andy Eskind for the image and to Carol for some Photoshop
cleanup.
A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction
between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and
his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is
which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he
is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or
playing. To himself he always seems to be doing both. Enough for him
that he does it well.
“Education through Recreation” by Lawrence Pearsall Jacks.
Ave atque vale
"We lay aside letters never to read them again,
and at last destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears
the most
beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for
ourselves and for others."
- Goethe
Bujold has said that parenting is a race
without a finish line. And like our lives, it comes without a
manual; you learn it by stumbling around in the dark. One does
what one can.
`
Sister Ruth
